Celtic Fans Are Entitled To A Vision

When the final whistle went on Tuesday night, my initial feelings were not despair or anger but a numbed kind of acceptance.

“This is where we are now,” I thought. “Time to start getting used to that fact.”

It’s that idea that makes me feel angry, not the performance as abject as it was.

This notion that we now need to narrow our horizons and think small.

That we have to “adapt” to being Champions League also-rans.

Yet it’s an inescapable conclusion to have to reach.

We’ve failed to get to the Groups Stages two years in a row now, and we’ve never looked entirely comfortable in our skin trying to reach them.

In hindsight, this was coming, as sure as Glasgow rain.

Signs of life from Celtic Park are rare enough at the best of times, but had we gone through Peter Lawwell’s smug face would be everywhere as he sought to take credit for the latest piece of brilliance in “the strategy.”

That strategy is a shambles.

It has been for years, and all the excuses – and I consider them just that; about being based in Scotland, about being “unable to compete with the big sides”, about “living within our means” – do little to hide that simple fact.

I know it won’t change as long as the present incumbents are at Celtic Park.

I know too that there’s no appetite amongst the supporters for seeing them removed.

We are, in the eyes of many, a “well run club.”

I agree, if that means a healthy balance sheet and no fireworks behind the scenes.

If it means competently run and professional then I cannot argue.

We are most certainly all of those things.

Our directors and senior staff are exactly the kind of people you want to see working down at your local credit union.

Safe pairs of hands.

But we’re a football club, not a corporate entity.

The team sheet ought to take precedence over the balance sheet.

We are supporters, not stock analysts and although some of us are shareholders too the notion that this board is maximising income on our behalf is ludicrous.

The last two years, we’ve lost an estimated £30 million out of failures which can be traced all the way from the boot-room to the boardroom.

If we were an EPL club a hit like that would hurt like Hell.

As a club playing in Scotland that’s money we certainly cannot afford to lose.

In strictly business terms, think of it like twice failing to land a major contract.

When this happened the first time, a company in any other field would have conducted a business review.

Things would have changed behind the scenes, perhaps even radically.

For that not to have happened, and for us to be back here as a result of that is an abrogation of responsibility at the top so staggering it would have resulted in a proposed shareholder vote of confidence in the CEO and others in any company of comparable size.

Last season, on or about the exact same date, Peter Lawwell told the media that he would give them some insight into what Celtic’s long term strategy was going to be.

He didn’t, and he had not intended to, although he was happy to give that impression.

What he did, instead, was give an interview to CelticTV, where he was asked softball questions by one of his own employees.

He then distributed the video to the media, who accepted it without question.

That was a shameful thing for them to have done and it was an appallingly brazen, Murray-Lite thing for Lawwell to have done.

That interview haunts me a year on and should haunt us all.

In it he made the spurious claim that the absence of a team called Rangers in the top flight had cost our club £10 million.

He actually, at one point, suggested that they had been “sent down” to the lowest tier of the game instead of actually stating the simple truth that Sevco are a liquidated club that started where all football clubs should start.

And he defended the strategy, the one that sees him out on his own as the highest paid person at Celtic Park, which limits our transfer policy to “projects” and loanees. The one that saw us suffer a shattering series of defeats and reversals the last time we did make it to the Groups because the side from the previous year had been dismantled and the proceeds banked. The one that saw Lennon leave in disgust.

All of this seems to have been forgotten now, by those who’re telling us that our club is hamstrung by circumstances and geography.

It’s nonsense.

We are here because of decision made inside our own walls, and a policy that will not allow us to grow.

Is it too much that we ask, now, facing another year in the second tier of European football, for some kind of honesty out of Celtic Park?

If Lawwell has a vision, then let him get in front of the actual press – lets face it, we know they won’t make it easy for him – and articulate what that is.

Why aren’t they clamouring for it?

Why aren’t more of us clamouring for it?

Where is our club going?

Where does its ambition now lie?

Are the board satisfied with the performance of the manager?

Do they think they’ve done enough to support his ambitions? What are those?

Does he see us a Champions League team or does he think the Europa League is the level at which we ought to be competing?

These are only some of the questions that need to be asked.

Who the Hell is asking them?

Most of the Celtic blogs in the last 24 hours have suggested that this is a time for rallying around the flag.

Seriously.

For the third year in a row those of us who’ve been asking just what in the Hell is going on at Celtic Park have been told the time is not right for that conversation.

When will it be right?

What, exactly, are we waiting for?

What are the circumstances under which some of our supporters will snap out of the lethargy and start asking questions of those who are running us at the moment?

Even if those people are right – and this is all nothing more than a consequence of being stuck in Scottish football – where are the moves to change that?

What’s happening behind the scenes?

Are we lobbying?

Are we building alliances across Europe?

Are we considering legal avenues?

Or are people at Celtic Park sitting staring at the phone, waiting for the call from the EPL to tell us, a club that has spent less than £3 million trying to build a team to challenge for a Champions League place, that our presence is required in their league to make it whole?

I’m fully prepared for the inbox of vitriol for this article.

For all the stick I get from Sevco fans, the worst abuse that comes my way is always strictly reserved for those times I write negative stuff about my own club.

So, I’ll keep it simple.

This “faithful through and through” stuff is for mugs.

It’s a free ride to the people who are taking us backwards.

It’s dangerous and damaging to Celtic.

It’s the same mentality that had Rangers fans sleeping at the wheel when their club was speeding towards the abyss.

Unquestioning. Uncritical.

Accepting of any nonsense that comes through the official club channels.

And before someone starts foaming at the mouth, I’m not suggesting Celtic is heading that way.

I’m saying that real and lasting harm is being done to us and our reputation.

I know nothing will change.

I know this article is a waste of my time and energy.

I know the board considers us nothing more than customers who are entitled only to the answers they think we should have, and I know a lot of our fans are comfortable with where we are.

But silence isn’t an option here.

We deserve a vision.

We deserve those answers.

Celtic is something we love, and that we might be so cavalier in watching it lose its way appals me.

I’m damned if I’m sitting through it and keeping my mouth shut.

There’s an old aphorism that comes to mind today.

“It’s better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try.”

If only that mentality were alive inside Celtic Park, this article wouldn’t be necessary.

(I published my feelings in a longer article for On Fields of Green. You can read it here.)